


Cages

by Ma_Kir



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Last of the Time Lords
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 10:36:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11644797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ma_Kir/pseuds/Ma_Kir
Summary: The Master, ruler of the Earth and jailer of his best enemy, ponders over killing The Doctor and, after looking into himself, decides not to do so.





	Cages

The Master tries to deny it, but he knows the reason. He knows the real reason why he did this.

He sits in the dark with his drink and bathrobe, after tormenting his Doctor -- his shriveled up caricature of a Doctor -- in the other's ornate birdcage. The fact that his opponent was always running and always wanting to run, only to be imprisoned in a tiny animal's cage fit only for a pet -- smaller than the dog house and its reeking straw back when the other was just ... a little younger -- is a delicious irony that does not escape him.

Sometimes he almost misses the days when The Doctor did run. When he watched him run all across the Universe meddling around with his idealistic, marvelously hypocritical ideals. As if the vermin that existed in the cosmos now needed saving instead of a kindly, yet stern authoritarian hand: or complete and utter agony and ultimate destruction: of which it all really depended on the day and the mood and form he was in at the time.

No. The time for running, and for talking -- that incessant talking -- had passed. It had past a long time ago. The Master wonders, not for the millionth time in the warped non-linear branches of his Time Lord mind if he should just push the final button on his laser screwdriver--the one he is absently rolling back and forth between his fingers on the table in front of him in a one, two, three, four pattern, one two three four -- and kill his enemy once and for all. 

All those years ... all those centuries. Between rotting alive in a failed regeneration, being mutated more than once, being executed, having to body-snatch in order to survive and being thrown into the Heart of the TARDIS -- of which he made her pay dearly -- and that ... that infernal Time War, it was amazing that he wasn't more insane than he was. And every time, every time he tried to defeat him, The Doctor always foiled him. Always. With his same infuriating pseudo-attempts at pacifism. Self-righteousness. That's what it was was. That self-righteous meddler. 

The Master planned it out well. He took The Doctor's beloved TARDIS and ripped her innards apart to make his Paradox Machine. He turned the Earth against him and his Companions. And then he made himself Prime Minister of the other Time Lord's favourite petty island state of "Great" Britain and then ruler of the entire mud-ball of a planet. He enjoyed enslaving those ugly, degenerate humans that The Doctor loved so much: to build weapons and remake the Time Lord Empire: this time the right way. 

But the cruelty that he showed The Doctor was not so much turning his pets into his slaves, but using his beloved TARDIS to bring the Toclafane out from the End of Time to devastate the very world that they originated from. And he didn't have to do anything except to bring them here. The last humans that sought Utopia ... Utopia... had altered themselves against the dying of the cold dark and the emptiness at the end of all things where not even Time Lords were remembered. All he had to do was bring them here, to show The Doctor what all of his efforts in saving them countless times -- ultimately bore out. 

Perhaps The Master's favourite moment was the realization in The Doctor's eyes when the Toclafane -- named after the boogeymen of their youth -- devastated and brought horror to their own ancestors: their own kind. When he saw the light die in The Doctor's eyes, it was better than any death he could have given him. The sight of his heartbreak was his victory. Even after all that when, inevitably , the other tried to escape -- because even The Doctor had a Time Lord's pride and didn't want to always be a pet -- it was halfhearted at best. 

The Master had broken The Doctor. It was a good day. And tonight, he was going to end it. He was tempted to take his laser screwdriver and accelerate the other's aging into dust: a grim, bitter, pointless dust. 

Yet something stopped The Master. And he didn't know why. He didn't want to know why. 

The Master remembered the End of Time. He'd always been good with disguises and even better at surviving. He'd been forced to flee the Time War and use that infernal Chameleon Arch to change himself into a filthy, disgusting, aging human being. And, as Professor Yana, he sat at the End of Time itself with attacks of the drums, the drums, the never-ending drum-beat, with his annoying assistant Chantho trying to save the last remnants of life against the inevitable dark. And all the while, his essence had been in that watch ... waiting ... waiting for so long.  

To be free again.

But the truth of the matter, deep down where The Master would not go, was that being Professor Yana -- being that doddering, ignorant, stupid old man fighting for a futile cause surrounded by other fools that relied on him and only him to save them -- had been one of the best moments of his life. Because the drumbeats were just an unknown neurological disorder that he had come to terms with, that he knew would only end with what little was left of his human life. But if he died -- fulfilling his small, but important purpose, with the only assistant and friend that he had -- it would all have been worth it.

But then The Doctor came and meddled: just like he always had. And when Professor Yana found his Fob watch ... and died in all the ways that mattered, The Master found himself ... his own malicious, twisted, hateful, crazy self again. 

And for that, and that alone, The Doctor deserved much more than death.


End file.
